core assignment
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coreassigment.docxINTEGRATED SEMESTER ASSIGNMENT
INSTRUCTIONS: The objective of the integrated semester is to help you extend your knowledge of how the finance, operations, management, and marketing disciplines work and how they integrate their functioning in the real world of business.
The document should be double-spaced, using Arial font #12. •
Add any Appendices at the end of the Word document. •
• Your reference sources, in addition to the base case and question sets, should be online sites and articles, Bloomberg terminals, your Integrated Semester textbooks, PowerPoint slides, and other sources you professor assigns. •
Turnitin, a software tool that improves writing and prevents plagiarism, will be used to assess your sourcing of information. Do your own work. Please read the instructions carefully before beginning to answer the questions. Contact your instructor if you don’t understand the assignment’s directions or requirements. The assignment must be submitted as instructed. You will lose points if you fail to follow the instructions or if the submission is formatted incorrectly
FINANCE
Please answer the questions below. Use either the Bloomberg terminals located at the Feliciano School of Business or other reputable sources such as the SEC website, finance.yahoo.com, Compustat, morningstar.com or Wall Street Journal etc. for the financial data you use in your answers. You need to provide the references regarding the financial data you use to support your answers at the end of the finance portion of the term paper.
Questions: 1. Expanding the number of stores in a foreign market, such as the expansion plan launched by Starbucks in China (announced in 2018), is a major capital budgeting project. A project of this scale requires coordinated planning across all functions of a business that you are studying in your Integrated Core classes. Choose and discuss three items on the income statement and balance sheet (a total of six items) that you think this new undertaking will effect. Explain why you chose those particular items, and how the marketing, management and operations decisions of the company will affect them.
2. Choose and calculate three ratios for Starbucks for the last two years. Make sure to select ratios that you think that expanding into a new market will effect, and explain your reasoning. Identify a competitor of Starbucks and contrast these three ratios for the two companies. Explain why you selected this competitor. Describe how the decisions made by management, marketing and operations functions of the company can impact, and hopefully improve, the components of firm operations that these financial ratios measure.
3. Explain how the financial decisions regarding opening a new store are related to management, marketing or operations decisions that the company must make (or has made)?
Operations:
Starbucks has developed a new coffee which uses some standard and some new ingredients. It believes this coffee could become wildly popular with its younger customers but wants to test market it in a few stores in key locations around the country to assess customer reaction. You are the manager of a Starbucks store that has been selected for this test marketing. (1000 in memo form)
a. You have full responsibility for the success of the test market at your store. Write a memo outlining the preparations that you will have to make at your store before the start of the test marketing. Your memo should focus on at least four of the following issues: staffing, training, equipment, supplies, store layout, quality, customer service, etc. (750 words)
b. Describe any interactions you would have with managers at Starbucks Finance, Marketing, and HR as you get ready for the start of the test-marketing in your store. For what issues would you need their help and support? (250 words).
Management:
1. Starbucks has been identified as one of the best places to work according to employee rankings and job posting websites. It has also earned a number of top customer service accolades and many of these recognitions result from Starbucks’ human resource management practices. Describe how Starbucks' human resource management practices enabled them to build their culture and become a successful company.
2. Starbucks’ strategy often enabled the company to successfully compete in a heavily saturated market of coffee shops and eateries. Describe Starbucks' strategy. What are some key elements of their strategy that enabled them to maintain a competitive advantage and keep customers?
3. As Starbucks’ business expands, it continually faces issues on how to keep customer satisfaction high and maintain and attract business. How has innovation and change specifically contributed to the success of the company? As the company grows larger, what types of changes are being made to the structure, technology, and people in the organization?
Marketing:
Listed below you will find some WEAKNESSES and THREATS for Starbucks, read them carefully then proceed to answer the questions that follow:
Starbuck Weakness:
1) Customers not willing to wait in long lines at stores during morning rush hour and lunch hour.
2) Coffee dominant business with a poor reputation for creativity around new product and companion product development.
3) Too dependent on word of mouth to create brand awareness.
Starbucks Threats:
1) Better value offered by local coffee house shops and national companies like Dunkin Donuts and McDonalds McCafe.
2) Downturn in the economy can decrease customer traffic and spending.
• • • • • PART I : MARKETING ASSIGNMENT QUESTIONS
1). Assume you are the Vice President of Marketing for Starbucks. Select 1 Weakness and 1 Threat from the list provided above, and explain how you would recommend taking that selected weakness and turning it into a strength and the selected threat and turning it into an opportunity.
Part 2: Provide 2 explanations as follows:
2a) Explain how the weakness turned into a new strength would impact the disciplines of Marketing, Finance, Management and Operations.
